


A Delicate Thing

by freezerjerky



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-27 04:25:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13873077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freezerjerky/pseuds/freezerjerky
Summary: Mithian comes in person to give her condolences.





	A Delicate Thing

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little post-canon something I wrote for [Merladiesfest2018](http://merladiesfest.tumblr.com) over on Tumblr.
> 
> post-canon fic featuring two of my favorite royal ladies. Yes, it's post-canon so there are allusions to Arthur's death.

Mithian comes in person to give her condolences. Of course, between the remaining threat of wandering Saxons and diplomatic business it's nearly three months after Arthur's death that she shows up in Camelot. Gwen wasn't present the first time Mithian came to Camelot, but she remembers the last time when she was so very desperate for help. This time, she arrives calm and collected, just as Arthur had always told Gwen she was.  
  
Gwen doesn't speak much during the visit. Grief is a heavy and awful thing that hits in waves and with the need to run a kingdom these past months, she's scarce had time to process what she's feeling properly. Instead, she keeps to herself and does the best she can. Mithian seems alright without any special treatment for the few days she's there, but she makes sure to have Gwen alone for her goodbyes.  
  
"Your Majesty," she says, stepping delicately into Gwen's rooms. Gwen looks up from what she's reading. It's still early in the morning, but she doesn't sleep very much these days.  
"Please, always just Gwen in private." Guinevere would be more appropriate, but the title is for subjects or the nobles. Gwen is for her friends. Guinevere was for so many men in her life who have died and left her behind to carry on as Gwen.  
  
"Gwen. I'll be leaving very soon. I thank you for your hospitality in this challenging time for you. The king was a truly incredible man."  
  
"He was." Gwen smiles at Mithian and it's a smile that means something, even if that meaning is the bare minimum of gratitude.  
  
"I'd like the chance to know you better, I realise we should have tried to be friends, but it's always been-"  
  
"The first time ever I saw you, you shot me with an arrow." Gwen bites her lip and then can't help but laugh. It's absurd but it's the truth. "Morgana had turned me into a deer, that day you went hunting."  
  
The look on Mithian's face in that moment is one of bewilderment. It doesn't match any of her usual composed expressions, but it's charming anyway. "Then I- I apologize for that, truly. I would like to make amends."  
  
"I think it's Morgana who needed to apologize for that, and I know she's done her share of hurt to you." Gwen supposes she's always kept Mithian at an arm's length as a woman who almost married her husband but that seems unfair and unkind.  
  
"You know-" Mithian ventures to slide into the seat besides Gwen at her table. "When I first met Arthur, when he so wholly rejected me, I asked for whom he was passing over such a good offer and I was so awed by how much you'd meant to him, how wholly he loved you. I wish I had more of a chance to see how reciprocal that love was and how wonderful of a woman this man had loved."  
  
Gwen smiles again and then pushes her reading aside, staring down into her lap. "I suppose I knew what I was getting into, marrying one of those rough and tumble sorts. The years I've had were lucky enough."  
  
Mithian reaches for her hand, giving it a squeeze. "And the years you've still got left in you, and there are many, are going to be incredible. You're already a brilliant queen."  
  
"Thank you, Mithian. And I'm sure you'll be a great queen yourself someday."  
  
They share a smile and sit in silence until one of Mithian's men comes to fetch her. Before she leaves, she promises to write to Gwen. For some reason this gives Gwen something akin to hope.  
  


The letters come as often as they can. Usually they'll recount the going-ons in Nemeth or distractingly funny exchanges. Most of Gwen's life has been so wrapped up in Camelot that she hasn't had much time to focus on the world outside of it. It's pleasant to have a friend who seems so very separate from her own world.  
  
The days she receives the letters are some of the brightest and while the grief always remains heavy in her chest, there's a lightness beside it. There's true love and then there's other sorts of love, after all, that are equally as valuable. She equates her giddy feelings to the joy she felt in the early days working for Morgana, when it was just the two girls in their own world. Peaceful, perfect.  
One day, a letter informs her that Mithian herself will be following shortly after. There's only a few days, so not much time to prepare anything, but she manages to sneak out the morning of, so her friend is greeted with a bouquet of fresh wild flowers. She takes her to the room and is granted the look of delighted surprise upon seeing the assortment.  
  
"And who do I have to thank for these?" she asks.  
  
"I picked those for you," Gwen answers. "I can sometimes manage to come and go as I please and I used to know all the best spots for flowers."  
  
"They're beautiful, thank you." Mithian leans over to smell them.  
  
Gwen's lips curl into a smile. "I'm glad you like them." She pauses. "I don't think you said fully in your letter why you're here."  
  
"My father had suggested I take some time away," she answers. "And I wanted to see friends. You, of course. And I realized last time I was here I didn't see my old friend Merlin."  
  
That name makes Gwen simultaneously dejected and elated. She wonders if her response will ever change. "Merlin comes and goes as he pleases these days. For his service, he's been promised a home here for life but he's...complicated."  
  
"Then I'll have to extend my stay until he appears, won't I?"  
  
A very selfish part of Gwen wishes that Merlin would never return in that moment.  
  
  
They spend their days in a subdued companionship. Mithian doesn’t complain that Gwen is too busy with a kingdom to entertain a guest. She understands, as far as Gwen knows, and probably knows how difficult it can be to do it alone. To always need to be proving yourself. For her last evening, there’s a feast and both women drink perhaps a bit too much and end up talking in Mithian’s rooms, like two girls exchanging tender and girlish secrets.  
  
“Do you think you’ll marry again?” Mithian asks, leaning forward towards her friend.  
  
“I- I haven’t thought of that much.” Of course Gwen has. Loving a prince had made her fully aware of the expectation of royalty to marry and marry well. While she didn’t expect to make another love match, she knew the political advantages of someone like herself, not from a royal or even noble family, marrying someone with a title. But she also needed that respect, someone who understood the vision she and Arthur had created together. “But I suppose maybe someday I will.”  
  
“I’m beginning to worry I’ll never marry,” Mithian admits. It doesn’t sound pitying, just matter of fact. “I’ve always been striving for what others had. Someone chosen not for title or for grand gestures but for nobility of heart and kind spirit. I’ve got enough stateliness for any marriage.”  
  
Gwen laughs. “You can marry any of Camelot’s knights that you’d like, if you’re interested in that sort of man.”  
  
“I’m not really sure what sort of…man I’m interested in.”  
  
Gwen bites her lip. She’s not a fool around this sort of language, or this sort of feeling. There were moments in her younger life when she would have done anything just to be able to be open and free, but she was blessed to have found a true and deep love in the more conventional way. There was a convenience in growing up with conventional and unconventional desires.  
  
“I understand.”  
  
“Do you?”  
  
“Well not perfectly, because I had a man and he was a very, very great man,” Gwen feels the need to explain something, “but you know there’s so very few great men and I just-“  
  
She stops, transfixed by the way the other woman is looking at her.  
  
“Sometimes your tender feelings are not made for men.”  
  
“Sometimes they’re not.” Gwen takes Mithian’s hand and lifts it to her lips, placing a gentle kiss on the back of it.  
  
“I know that no one will ever have the same meaning to you that Arthur did, and I cannot fathom what sort of difficulties we would face if we ever moved beyond this, but I ask you to think fondly of me, Gwen. I ask nothing else of you and never will.”  
  
“Of course.” She nods. Love is not a fixed thing- it does not choose one person and bury itself with them. It does not have a singular definition or even a singular gender. True love is not the end to loving others. “But what I give to you, I give freely, even if I’m unsure of what it is.”  
  
Mithian nods, then leans in to press a kiss to Gwen’s cheek. There’s a delicate thing, a longing hanging between them but tonight is not the night. There’s no need for tonight to be the night, because they are not men, they are the women who survived destruction and bloodshed. They will survive and create kingdoms, hopefully lands of love and healing.


End file.
